The language of the law. Part Latin, part Anglo-Saxon, all confusing.
Today’s words are a matter of percentages.
It’s very hard for The Legal Genealogist — or anyone else here in the 21st century — to come to grips with the reality of the race-based distinctions the law made only a short time ago.
Even though we find it distasteful, the fact is the law pigeonholed people into various categories based on the percentage of African ancestry they had, and assigned names to those categories.
The language of the law then reflected those distinctions by having names for those the law regarded as non-white.
So we don’t like it. Not one bit.
But we can’t begin to understand the records if we don’t understand the language that was used.
Terms we may see in records we review in researching our families then may include:
• Demi-meamelouc: a person who was “1/32 black, (issue of) white and meamelouc.”1
• Griffe: a person who was “3/4 black, (issue of) Negro and mulatto.” 2
• Marabou: a person who was “5/8 black, (issue of) mulatto and griffe.”3
• Meamelouc: a person who was “1/16 black, (issue of) white and metis.”4
• Métis or métif: a person who was“ 1/8 black, (issue of) white and quarteron.”5
• Mulatto: “a person that is the offspring of a negress by a white man, or of a white woman by a negro”;6 a person who was “1/2 black, (issue of) white and Negro.”7
• Mustizo: “A name given to the issue of an Indian and a negro.”8
• Octoroon: “a person having one quadroon and one White parent and therefore having one-eighth Black blood.”9
• Quadroon: “A person who is descended from a white person and another person who has an equal mixture of the European and African blood”;10 a person who was “1/4 black, (issue of) white and mulatto”.11
• Sacatra: a person who was “7/8 black, (issue of) griffe and Negro.”12
• Sang-mêle: a person who was “1/64 black, (issue of) white and demi-meamelouc.”13
Words like these are hard to accept. Hard to deal with. But it’s part of our history and we have to know what the words meant when we see them.
SOURCES
Image: OpenClipArt, user laobc
- John Russell Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, 4th ed. (Boston : Little, Brown, 1877), 422 ; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 12 Jan 2015). Bartlett added: “…these varieties exist in New Orleans, with sub-varieties; and experts pretend to be able to distinguish them.” ↩
- Ibid. See also Dupree v. State, 33 Ala. 380 (Ala. 1859). ↩
- Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms, 422. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 792, “mulatto.” ↩
- Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms, 422. ↩
- Black, A Dictionary of Law, 795, “mustizo.” ↩
- The Free Dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com : accessed 12 Jan 2015), “octoroon.” ↩
- Black, A Dictionary of Law, 970, “quadroon.” ↩
- Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms, 422. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
Can you use them in Scrabble?
I can’t see why not — except that you may want to check and make sure they’re in the dictionary you use for challenges! (Many archaic terms have been eliminated from dictionaries.)
Someone sent me a copy of an article in which the School Board of Rockingham County, Virginia in 1915 debated whether the children of a particular family could continue attending school because the children did not meet the percentage guidelines as set by the state. Part of the debate was whether they were really part Negro or Mexican. The parents had been licensed to marry as white and attended a white church. The really sad part of the story is that the teacher removed the children from the roll based on neighborhood gossip. The family’s lawyer came to the rescue by doing the math: he showed that even if the children were part Negro, they were only 1/32, thus meeting the state requirements. Considering the attitudes of the day, that had to be an embarrassing little episode for the family.
In the census records, though, the term “M” or “Mulatto” was used generically regardless of percentage.
Just amazing, isn’t it? The “one drop” rules, the percentages, the whole issue of discrimination… just amazing.
The word “Métis” is still part of the law and culture in Canada, albeit with an entirely different meaning than used in your list. Historically, it was a loose term to mean someone with First Nations and European parents/ancestry. It also used to be a term more closely associated with those of mixed French and aboriginal heritage (as the French origin of the word implies), but that distinction has largely disappeared. At law, the word has defied specific definition, but a line of cases starting in 2003 took steps in providing a definition. The cases usually relate to those of Métis heritage trying to qualify for certain rights or privileges that belong to “Indians”, a word with very specific legal meaning and that applies to a distinctly defined set of people that often excludes those who identify as Métis. While “Indian” is seen as an archaic term, we’re kind of stuck with it because it’s in our constitution and amending the constitution in Canada is a nearly impossible task these days and is always a highly politically charged proposition.
Good to have the Canadian viewpoint on this, Sean — and to know that the word will have a very different meaning north of our border.
Hello again – I seem to have a habit lately of revisiting old posts. It crossed my mind to update what I posted about the meaning of “Metis” in Canada.
In April, our Supreme Court issued a landmark decision [Daniels v. Canada (Indian Affairs and Northern Development) http://canlii.ca/t/gpfth%5D declaring that “Metis” (along with “non-status” Aboriginals – that’s a long story) are “Indians” under Canada’s constitution (“Indian” is generally no longer an acceptable term, but we’re stuck with a constitution written in 1865). This has a huge impact on the rights of Metis people.
An interesting thing about the case is that the SCC declined to define the term, largely because it is so broad and historically has had different meanings in different parts of Canada.
I recently went through Canadian case law and noted that genealogy is a factor in dozens of appeal-level cases, many times more so than the area of estates or family law. Usually it comes up as to a person’s entitlement to rights or benefits associated with an Aboriginal or Metis group. As well, it is often raised as a defence in criminal or statutory offence proceedings (e.g. disputes over violations of hunting and fishing law, in which there is an exception for Aboriginal or Metis rights to hunt or fish). I expect with the Dennis case, this will become an even more frequent topic in our courts.
Oops! I hate finding significant typos _after_ clicking “submit”. Our Constitution was written in 1867, not 1865.
Truly an eye-opener for most everyone, even those who some time ago learned what ‘octoroon’ signified. Having direct-line family who owned—and bequeathed—slaves in the 18C, I think that it is important to understand exactly what they might have expected, socially and personally, from those ‘fractionals.’
It is part of our history and we have to understand the language to understand the records.
Learned many of these terms in my African American History/Cultural classes and through Negro Literature. I have found that some of the terms also vary depending on the locale of the person. I have seen that Mulatto may also be viewed as Indian, with or without Black. Thank you for this post…Very informative.
They absolutely do vary in time and place, Yvette!
Coincidentally, I just read Crimson Angel by Barbara Hambly, and it contains a similar list for Haiti and New Orleans in the early 1800s.
These particular terms, with the French overlay, were widely used in both Haiti and Louisiana.